Porcelain
by devilberry
Summary: Little boys don't like to play with dolls.


_Drabble. It was supposed to be a really depressing ficlet on Alice's unrequited love, but turned into yuri fluff. Yay?_

_Anyway, enjoy the unrequited Alice/Oz, implied Oz/Gil, and cute fluffy Alice/Sharon._

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Little boys don't like to play with dolls.

They like action and adventure. Dashing heroes, damsels in distress, dark and mysterious figures.

(And, somehow, a certain stupid raven can perfectly fit all three personalities.)

But with this porcelain skin, and this head of darkdarkdark yarn, and these full pink lips, a doll is all Alice will ever be.

She can kick and scratch and fight—bleed and hurt, kill and slaughter—but all that little boy will ever see in her is her cherubic features. Angelic face. White complexion. Large eyes—violet and violent—like jewels.

And the more she fights—against Raven or those chains or enemies or for that little boy's affection—the more she is reminded of this. Her fragile skin starts to shatter after all of the abuse; cracks peppering the porcelain, reaching out like spider webs waiting to trap today's meal, or like rays of sun searching for something beautiful to shine their light upon.

But no one cares to notice. No one cares to care. No one seems to look at her desperation. No one ever wants to dissect her—cut her open, see what makes that little clock she left on the boy's chest tick.

Until she comes across a cute little princess. Princesses love to play with dolls.

She's a beautiful little thing, this princess. Maybe even a doll herself. Her strawberry blonde hair flows down her soft, small, sweet body; framing her perfectly. She's nearly always smiling, light eyes shining with a bright joy that little Alice never seems to understand. And she hold in her hands a needle and thread, some glue, and she's ready to fix up the doll that she's set her bright eyes upon.

She teaches Alice everything she's ever learned in her longer-than-you'd-think lifetime. The differences between a large fork and a small one, how to dance properly, how to laugh delicately at every joke...how to kiss.

The first time the little doll leans in and smashes her lips against the equally whitewhitewhitecheek of her teacher, Sharon scolds her. If only because it's what society deems proper.

And the more time they spend together, the more attached they become. Alice has somehow morphed; her porcelain skin traded in for shining armor. Her forever desperate-for-attention attitude shifts. She's fighting because she has to—because it's right—and not to earn a little boy's attention.

Little boys don't like to play with dolls, and Alice finally knows this.

But, for some reason, it still hurts to know. A dull ache in her chest thumps were her heart should be when she sees it. (And do chains even have hearts? She's not human and sometimes she forgets that. She's really just a broken, ugly, stupid doll.) It's been coming for a while now, and she knew it, she _knew_, because he is everything that a little boy likes. But she's still hurt when she sees that little boy's fingers carding through ravenblack hair and two faces pressed so close that they're sharing the same air and so much more.

And it's obvious, really. What she does in this situation. Runs off—would fly if she could, but she's not a bird. Never will be—to her new owner. The sweet woman-trapped-in-a-girl's-body that's come to care for her. Fix her wounds, brush her hair. Smiles and coos little spells that help soothe the doll she holds in her arms.

And this time, Alice presses her painted-pink lips against Sharon's. She holds them there—maybe for just a moment, or maybe for an eternity—before she pulls away and the blood rushes to her cheeks.

Looking into those violently violet pools of glass—those little jewels that fit perfectly into Alice's ivory countenance—and holding the other girl so close, feeling her breath on her neck, and seeing the sea of cracks that outline the porcelain of Alice's skin, Sharon knows that she won't be able to scold the girl over a kiss ever again.


End file.
